MLB.com's Carrie Muskat has been covering Major League Baseball since 1981 and is the author of "Banks to Sandberg to Grace: Five Decades of Love and Frustration with the Cubs." You can follow her on Twitter @CarrieMuskat. Here, she blogs about the Cubs.

9/23 The Cubs have won nine of their last 11 games …

… and the pitching deserves a lot of credit. The team ERA in that stretch is 1.29 (14 earned runs in 98 innings), with the starters posting a 1.09 ERA (nine earned runs over 74 innings). Opponents are hitting .179 off the Cubs in those 11 games, and they’ve walked 42 while striking out 92. Also, the Cubs have given up one or no runs in six of the 11.

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